Music Appreciation

Laurie Dickinson has served as the Music Theory Chairperson at the Boston University Conservatory of Music. In this article, Dickinson takes an investigative look into the rhythms of Hughes’s poetry. Although many people know Hughes was deeply inspired by jazz music, Dickinson uses many of Hughes’s works, including five of Hughes’s lesser-known pieces.

As a University of Northern Iowa College student taking Soundscapes, I attended a recital by Annalea Milligan on Wednesday Oct. 19th, 2016 at 8:00 p.m. in Davis Hall, a small auditorium, at the Gallagher Bluedorn. Annalea Milligan received her Bachelor of Music degree in performance at Pacific Conservatory of Music, and is currently a first-year graduate student pursuing a Master of Music degree in bassoon performance at University of Northern Iowa. For the first half of the program she played the bassoon in Rhapsody composed by Willson Osborne and then she was accompanied by Mariya Akhadjanova on piano playing Variations on Theme of Pergolesi composed by Otmar Nussio which included I. Arietta, II. Scherzetto, III. Tamburino, IV. Lamento, V. Ostinato, VI. Rapsodia, VII. Elegia, VIII. Barbaresca, IX. Stornello, and X. Danza. Then after a brief intermission Milligan played the bassoon and was accompanied by Serena Hou with the harpsichord playing Concerto in G Minor, RV 495 composed by Antonio Vivaldi which included Presto, Largo, and Allegro, not to mention she also played Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6 composed by Heitor Villa-Lobos and was accompanied by Azeem Ward with the flute which included I. Aria (Choro), and II. Fantasia. I will depict the first and second part of the recital and describe my reaction and total opinion about the overall concert.

Florence Price is an essential figure in the musical world as well as in the history of African-Americans and females. Having published her first work by age 11, Ms. Price proceeded to create beautiful music and influence the world

Nina Simone was one of the most unique, influential, and gifted singers of her generation. She was born on February 21, 1933 as Eunice Waymon, in Tryon, North Carolina. Her mother was a preacher and she started playing piano at an early age, around 3 or 4 at her mother’s church, as she was playing piano at a local recital she caught the eye of an older white woman willing to give her lessons. Nina went on to studying classical piano for 5 years with the woman, learning the stylings of the classical greats such as Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, and Brahms. As a child she felt so isolated, spending up to 7 hours a day practicing the piano, and growing up in the south in the segregation era, she felt as she could not fit in neither with the white or black community, even when surrounded by other children all they wanted to

There are so many classical music composers that have achieved a lot in their lifetime and have meant a lot to so many people. But the works of them is not as much compered to the works of Florence B. Price. Florence Price was the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra. Florence Beatrice Price was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on April 9, 1887. Her mother, Florence Gulliver, was a teacher who taught her how to play piano at the age of 4. Florence gave her first recital at that same age, realizing that music was her talent.

Mrs. Thomas shares with me that her earliest childhood memory was at the age of 5 years old. She recalls the family installing a Baby Grand Piano, which they placed in the family’s living room, where each child in the home learned to play well. Most evenings after dinner the family would sing and play the piano, taking turns as a way of sharing family time, this was something the entire family enjoyed. She said she valued engaging in music with her family because she believed it provided a bond between each sibling and her mother. She recalls her life

John Williams was born in New York City on February 8, 1932 After serving in the military for three years he studied at Juilliard, a prestigious fine arts college in New York, New York, to become a concert pianist. His dream was to follow in his father’s footsteps. His father was a musician who taught John how to play the piano at a young age. At Juilliard, John studied under the musician, Rosina Lhevinne. He later decided to become a composer when he heard that musicians like John Browning and Van Cliburn were also studying under Rosina Lhevinne.

1. Write two pages on Ellen Zwilich's music. Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, born 30th April 1939 is a famous American composer and the first woman to receive the Pulitzer award (Rudman, pp.7). Zwilich began her compositions while still young and at the time she completed high school, she could play the trumpet, piano, and the violin. Zwilich’s early songs were full of atonal exploration but through the experience she has moved to a neo-romantic and post-modernist form of the genre.

Successful classical soprano performer Leontyne Price was one of the first artists to benefit from Marian Anderson’s hard work and dedication. The day after Marian Anderson’s death, April 8th, 1993 Price discussed the ways in which Anderson was able to overcome obstacles while remaining consistently professional and keeping the high standards she set on her performances. Marian Anderson was born on February 27, 1897. She was considered one of the most celebrated African-American artists of the twentieth century. Anderson identified herself as a contralto, which is the lowest frequency female voice with in a choir. Although Anderson is classified as a classical vocalist her repertoire included many genres such as opera, traditional American songs, concert literature and spirituals. Her live performances spanned the years of 1925 to 1965. The majority of her performances were recitals or concerts, some of which took place within major venues. Through Anderson’s successful career she paved a path for many other African-American vocal artists to follow. This paper explores the ways in which Marian Anderson’s career, from her early beginnings, struggle for recognition, and worldwide acclaim shaped her identity as a representation for African-American vocalists after her to follow.

Langston Hughes’s book, Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, presents several jazz pieces that express the suffering African Americans have had to face over many years. The vernacular tradition in these works, is expressed through the jazz music that plays in the background while the poems recited (Pasadena City College). The jazz music gives the poems a feeling of Blues, but also tends to have a more upbeat feeling during certain points of the poems. In Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, all of the twelve pieces have a connection to each other in various ways. The connections involve the degree of suffering, money, or success. In “Ode to Dinah” and “Horn of Plenty,” Hughes exhibits all three of these connections, both in similarities and differences.

Compositional writing in the Unites States started in the late 1600s and early 1700s with European born composer Charles Theodore Patchelbel (1690-1750). American compositional writers were a male dominant career, in which women had little compositions produced, until Emma Roberto Steiner (1852-1929) produced some of her works. It was not until Amy Beach (née Cheney) (1867-1944) who proved that American women as capable of producing small and large compositional works. Amy Beach was an extremely talented female composer who against the odds, of her parents and society, was influential and successful both as the first female American composer to compose large works and advocate for more female composers.

American classical music has been innovated with every single passing year, majority of the composers have added their taste and invention to further enhance the crispiness and enchanter the form of classical music. One of the most legendary and prominent composer of

American born, but European-trained, Edward MacDowell is known as one of America’s prominent composers during the Gilded Age. With the rise of musical nationalism in America, MacDowell composed Woodland Sketches in 1896, which comprised of ten piano pieces whose titles refer to the American landscape and his personal experiences. The most well-known piece of the ten is “To a Wild Rose.” “To a Wild Rose” highlights MacDowell’s skills as a composer to harvest deep emotions and impressions from the listener from a simple motive; however, it was also an attempt for MacDowell to claim an identity as an American composer.

This piece in particular is very sentimental to the Hill District which is located in Pittsburgh, because it was hung on the wall of the Hill Association for a period of time starting in the year of 1975. Selma Burke’s Together became her retirement piece, however, this piece was the beginning for the legacy she had left behind. In this reflection, the piece Together will be depicted for meaning and described for content, structure, subject matter and form and furthermore be compared and contrasted with another artwork, The Last Judgement by Gilbertus.

Clara Josephine Wieck was born on September 13, 1819 in Leipzig, Germany into a musical family. Her father, Friedrich Wieck, was “a first-rate piano teacher.” Her mother, Marianne Tromlitz, was a soprano and one of Wieck’s piano students. Clara Wieck’s parents divorced when she was five years old, leaving her and her four brothers in her father’s custody. Tromlitz married Adolf Bargiel and moved to Berlin, but she still kept in contact with Clara through letters.